Through Space-but-not-Time
by Thatspazzy Artist
Summary: Tired of fighting, a group of Cybertronians struggle to survive with limited resources while being hunted by the enemy. Hearing a signal they go to Earth to see if its really as peaceful as the voice says it is. *many OCs, very much a one-shot*


The spaceship floated past the debris, not so much as flying but drifting. The outside of the ship showed its battle scars as burns and huge scratches that stretched from helm to port. The inside of the ship looked better than the outside, but not by much. The seeker mech made notes on what he needed to fix as he walked down the hallway.

He too bore the signs of a battle, dented and scratched armor mostly to his left side, scratched wings and a limp, but he was one of the lucky few. The last hit that the ship took hit the left engine fuel tank and made one spectacular firework display. Sadly, none of the robots that worked there survived. Out of the thirty mechs aboard the small ship, only six made it. The mech rubbed his left arm as the sounds of his dying comrades' screams echoed in his head. With a hard cycle of his vents, he went back to surveying the damage.

Many of the walls had dents and a few had dried out Energon splattered across them. The bridge suffered little to no damage, but problems still popped up. As the mech stepped through the doorway calling out, "Skywriter!" it jammed with an odd crunching sound. Another mech near the panel closest to the door, Skywriter, cursed as the panel he worked on for the last few cycles sparked before setting itself on fire. He jerked back as smoke began to come out, coughing out the smoke that went into his vents.

"Slaggin' piece of scrap!" he snarled before tapping the right side of his head and yelling out, "Cyber!"

A clicking noise seemed to acknowledge Skywriter as a tiny, scorpion-like robot shifted out of the mech's head and crawled down to reach his shoulder. Cyber stared at the smoking panel before chattering in a displeased tone, its face turned toward Skywriter.

"Yea, yea I know. Just go and fix what you can alright?" snapped back Skywriter. He moved his arm closer to the machine and Cyber jumped on before skittering into a hatch. The sounds of whirring, scratching, and clicking came through before Skywriter turned toward his guest.

"How bad is it, Grifter?" he muttered as he waved the seeker over to a 'table' to sit down. Skywriter pulled out two cubes of Energon out of his subspace and placed them on the table.

Grifter nodded his appreciation before taking a sip. The energon was a little off, but Grifter did not mind. He sighed before starting his report.

"What's left of the left half of the ship can't seem to regulate its gravity field. In some places, it is nonexistent while in other places it is enough to crush _into_ nonexistence. Most of the explosion from the tanks made a good chunk of the storage room go with it, including all of the Energon there," Grifter paused to look at his cube before taking another sip from it, "so that means rationing what is le-." He stopped talking, as Cyber's chitterling suddenly became the focus of Skywriter's attention. Skywriter tilted his head with a scowl before focusing back on Grifter.

"Sorry, Cyber needed a refresher in wiring" Skywriter muttered as he drank slowly from his cube. He stared through the remaining Energon at the other mech with as much mirth as he could manage. "You know that will be a problem for _them_. They can't skip another meal, not after all we went through just to keep him alive…"

Grifter nodded as he heard the clunking steps of the other survivors. "Should I-?" he said as he stood up.

"No, I'll do it. I am less beat up and could move away at a faster pace than you could "Skywriter joked before shifting his face into a more controlled look as the other two survivors limped into view.

* * *

The trilling of an alarm clock startled Adrian out of her sleep. With a grumpy groan, she looked at the time before slapping the snooze and muttering, "Five more minutes…"

Unfortunately, she only got a few more seconds before her bedroom door burst open and her father strode into the room. He went to Adrian's nightstand and turned on the light. Adrian groaned as the light hit her face and rolled away.

"Adi, sweetheart… Come on you promised." he said as he shook her shoulders.

"Ddaaaadddd," moaned Adrian. "It's too early for this." She waved her hands toward her dad trying to shoo him away. "Take Gael or Damien not me, they like going to this jank reunion more."

"Adrian Natalya Montengo, visiting your grandfather at his home in Utah is not 'jank', now get up. You know they're coming too so you can't use this excuse. Look, the entire family has to go." Marcus Montengo said with a disapproving tone. He crossed his arms against his chest as his daughter responded with a snort.

"Not Faiiirrr" she groaned again. Adrian turned toward her nightstand and turned off the light. "Let me sleep. I'm not going."

"Adri, if I don't see you downstairs in the next ten minutes, you can forget going out with your friends to see that movie when we come back. Dress warmly, ok? Its cold outside." he warned as he walked out the door, cutting off any protest his daughter made to the threat. He waited a few seconds before he heard grumbling and clattering sounds of his teenage girl getting ready at 5:30 a.m. Even though Adrian acts like a brat, he knew she would do anything to get away from her "embarrassing" family, even for a few hours.

"Teenagers, gets them every time," he muttered to himself as he walked into the kitchen to see his wife cooking up a quick breakfast. He gave her a hug and a kiss before moving toward the table. "Adri might want some coffee too…" he said as he leaned against the counter.

"Marcus…" she said with a small but playful scowl on her face, "I hope you woke Adri up gently. You know she's not a morning person."

"I know, Adelaide." Marcus said as he sat down at the kitchen's island to eat at the plate of eggs and bacon already set. "Too bad she can't be like her brothers, getting up before us and having their things in order the day before. Or even like you, always watching the sunrise before you go to work."

He began to chow down as Adelaide poured three separate cups of coffee and drank out of one. As he picked up his cup to finish the last of his coffee, he heard the 'thumps' that meant Adrian was still mad from being woken up. Adrian stomped into the kitchen, her eyelids struggling to stay open as she pulled in a red rolling luggage bag and her black backpack. The two bags seemed like it would explode if you touched them and Marcus thought her backpack rumbled as she dropped it on the floor.

"Morning," she mumbled to her parents before grabbing her coffee cup and sipping it like it was her lifeline. She made a face before grabbing the sugar and pouring three large spoonfuls in it. After taking another sip, she nodded before going to sit at the table.

"Come on, Adri. You can sleep on the way over to grandpas" Adelaide coaxed her daughter as she put Adrian's breakfast into a plastic container before handing it to her. Adrian grunted as she took it and walked out of the kitchen.

"Evil reunion" she muttered as she picked her bags up and shuffled out of the kitchen. Marcus turned to his wife, who only mouthed 'good luck' to her husband as she gave him a good-bye kiss. He sighed and mentally prepared himself for the long car ride to the airport.

* * *

The ship was silent again as the survivors went into recharge. It had been hard for the other survivors, a bonded pair called Microscript and Technos, to learn that there might not be enough Energon to go around. The bonded knew that their levels were low and had hoped that it would be enough for at least a few more cycles before the inevitable happened. Skywriter had been as comforting as he could, but the mech was no caretaker. They left with dejected stances toward what was left of their quarters to recharge and conserve their dwindling strength. Grifter had left after them but they wanted to be alone.

That was a while ago, and Grifter now found himself in front of a viewing window. He could not fall into recharge, so he decided to take a walk to his favorite spot on the ship. The window should have showed the outside of the ship, but with all the spider web-like cracks, it was a bit difficult to do so. The bench was thrown away from the window and Grifter had to awkwardly shift his body to even sit on the only piece of the bench that was not bent or twisted. He put his head into his servos as he stared at the window, cursing all the bad luck the ship had within the last few cycles.

' _To survive this long in the war, only to die from starvation…Primus seems to have a cruel sense of humor for us_.' he thought bitterly. Grifter sat for what felt like vorns before he fell into a restless recharge on the uncomfortable bench.

Skywriter was jolted out of his recharge by a 'new message' beeping away in his message board. He snarled as he opened it, sitting up and letting Cyber out so that he could stretch his 'legs' out.

"'Skywriter, you need to get your aft to the bridge. You need to see this- Grifter,'" he mumbled aloud. Cyber shifted his body into another new position that made Skywriter cringe. There was a moment of silence before Skywriter decided that whatever Grifter needed him to see, it could wait for a few more clicks as he got his own kinks out.

' _You go see now? Maybe important'_ clicked Cyber as he crawled back into Skywriter's head. Skywriter cracked his knuckles before getting out of his room. He walked down the hallway, half listening to Cyber's thoughts on what the ship needed, what Grifter might have found to wake them up, and how there needed to be someone somewhere that still knew how to make the Energon treats that he liked so much.

Sky made noncommittal sounds throughout the exchange and was less likely to pound a few new dents into Grifter before passing through the faulty doors of the bridge. He noticed a drastic change in his fellow shipmates: both Microscript and Technos were hugging and smiling at each other while Grifter had a huge grin on his face. The three of them turned to look at Skywriter as he stared at the bots.

"Oh, Primus no. You've all gone mad with space fever," he groaned to them as he walked closer to Grifter. "Now what was so important that you would wake me up-"

Before Skywriter could finish reprimanding them, Grifter nodded to Technos and he immediately started to rapidly type on a computer. One of the few still intact screens lit up with a garbled mess of static before showing a grainy picture of a blue planet covered in large masses of green-brown.

"We can land on this planet, prelim-scans show usable energy covering it." Technos said with excitement sprinkled into his tone. "Who knows, it might even have something we could convert to Energon? Whaddya say Sky?"

If Skywriter had any excess energy, and if he were a few stellar cycles younger, he would have jumped for joy at the news. Instead, he rolled out another kink as he went to his station to locate where the ship could land safely without causing more problems for them.

* * *

Adrian was jerked out of her sleep by her younger brother Gael grabbing onto her arm as a bolt of lightning streaked across the darkened sky, followed by the booming rumble of thunder. She looked up at the sky as the rain began, wishing she could actually move down her window to feel the rain on her skin. The car doors opened and shut quickly as her older brother and father jumped inside.

"Great…" moaned Damien as he shook the water out of his hair with a glare to the sky. "Driving in this weather is going to suck, Dad."

Marcus made a small noise as he pulled the car out of the rest stop and onto the highway. "We're only fifteen minutes away, I think we can make it before it gets worse." he said as another flash and rumble shook the car. Gael made a whimper as he buried his face in his baby blanket. Adrian gently patted his head as the rain seemed determined to prove her father wrong. She watched how the landscape slowly but surely disappeared under the curtain of rain until it was nearly impossible to see the road.

"Still think we can make it dad?" asked Adrian as Marcus finally decide to pull the car over after they started to skid on the road. As the quartet sat in the car, watching the rain turn into small hail, Marcus turned to his kids. His frown clearly meant this would put a hitch in the plans to get to the airport on time, but on the bright side their plane might even be delayed with the weather like this.

"Alrighty, so…I'm thinking of a number-" he began but was blocked out by his older children and the youngest merely hid himself in order to get away from the loud taps.

Marcus sighed as he sat back wondering when his kids became so distant.

* * *

*also gently places this here before scurrying back into hiding*


End file.
